Dr Karen Harvey

Department of History

Karen is a cultural historian of the British long eighteenth century, with a special interest in gender. She uses a wide range of written, visual and material sources in her research, and similarly employs a number of different approaches. She is committed to interdisciplinarity, exemplified by her role in the network ‘Materializing Culture’, and the conferences on Home Life and Domesticity.

A particular interest in the body and sexuality led her to write an account of the erotic culture of the eighteenth century, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and to edit The Kiss in History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). She has ongoing research interests in masculinity, print culture (both visual and textual), material culture, and what might be termed the rather more ‘impolite’ aspects of the eighteenth century. Karen also has an interest in contemporary representations – both historiographical and popular – of the eighteenth-century past, including those in films and museums.